1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a thermal treatment apparatus to perform a thermal treatment in a furnace.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, it have been begun that fuel cells utilizing hydrogen as a fuel are applied to, for example, automobiles or portable devices as clean power supplies with high energy conversion efficiency.
The fuel cell is equipment which electrochemically reacts a fuel with oxygen in the air to directly extract electric energy from chemical energy. The fuel to be used for the fuel cell includes hydrogen, but it has handling and storing problems because it is in a gas state at room temperature. If liquid fuels such as alcohols and gasoline are used, the liquid fuels are reacted with high-temperature steam, which requires a reformer to extract hydrogen needed for power generation. In general, the reformer needs to reform the fuel in a high-temperature state.
Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2003-117409 describes, as a small chemical reacting furnace, a thermal treatment apparatus (temperature adjustment means) using a heating element such as a metal.
FIG. 13 shows a small reformer 100 including such a heating element. A chamber 101 is formed within the reformer 100, and a heating element 102 is provided in the chamber 101. The heating element 102 is conducted by lead wires 103, 104 from a power supply section 105. A resistive element temperature sensor 108 is disposed in the chamber 101, and wires 109, 110 of the resistive element temperature sensor 108 are connected to a temperature measurement section 111 where a thermal electromotive force is measured to measure the temperature in the chamber 101.
Electric power is supplied from the power supply section 105 to the heating element 102 through the lead wires 103, 104, and when the heating element 102 generates heat, water and a fuel supplied to the chamber through a supply pipe 106 are heated by the heating element 102, so that water and the fuel cause a reaction to produce hydrogen. In this connection, an optimum temperature range is generally present in the chemical reaction between water and the fuel. Thus, a signal representing a temperature measured by the temperature measurement section 111 is input to a control section 112, and the control section 112 controls the electric power of the power supply section 105 in accordance with the input signal, thereby maintaining not only the temperature of the heating element 102 but also the temperature in the chamber 101 within the optimum temperature range.
As described above, in the configuration where the heating element 102 and the resistive element temperature sensor 108 are disposed in the chamber 101, the lead wires 103, 104 and the wires 109, 110 need to be led into the chamber from the outside, which involves a problem of a complicated connection structure due to increase in the number of wires, so that this problem becomes obvious particularly when the reformer needs to be stored in a decompressed container.
Furthermore, it is desirable that all heat energy produced by the heating element 102 should be used for the reaction between water and the fuel, but the lead wires 103, 104 and the wires 109, 110 are low-resistant conductors and therefore at least partially contain a metal, which poses a problem that the heat energy in the chamber 101 is lost because metals are highly heat-conductive and conduct heat in the chamber 101 out of the reformer 100, and a problem of a decrease in temperature measurement precision.
An advantage of the present invention is to provide a thermal treatment apparatus and a power generation module which enable the configuration to be simplified and heat loss in the furnace of the reformer to be reduced and which raise the temperature measurement precision.